In their article “The Upside of Income Inequality” authors Gary Becker and Kevin M. Murphy argue that the solution to income inequality is to have more and more students attend and graduate from colleges. Becker and Murphy imply that students from “broken households” earn lower grades and test scores, therefore reducing their chances at entering and staying enrolled in colleges due to subpar cognitive skills. Throughout the article, charts are shown to show promising statistics of students of all ethnicities being successful in colleges. However they later state:
Why haven’t more high school graduates gone on to a college educa¬tion when the benefits are so apparent? Why don’t more of those who go to college finish a four-year degree? (Only
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[…] Why did Keynes’ promised utopia – still being eagerly awaited in the ‘60s – never materialise?
Rather than allowing a massive reduction of working hours to free the world’s population to pursue their own projects, pleasures, visions, and ideas, we have seen the ballooning not even so much of the “service” sector as of the administrative sector, up to and including the creation of whole new industries like financial services or telemarketing, or the unprecedented expansion of sectors like corporate law, academic and health administration, human resources, and public relations.
I see a “bullshit job” (as author David Graeber puts it) as one that adds nothing satisfying to a worker’s human needs and desire. The reason we don’t have more leisure time, and take note that most of us do want more, is because so many of us are caught up in busy work that doesn’t do anything to provide for the needs, or even the desires, of the worker. Most people who work in these “bullshit jobs” don’t really like them. I think that these people who don’t really like the work they do, would like more leisure time to be creative, relax, enjoy time with their families or friends, get into a hobby, or learn something new. When a person goes to work there should be two goals to accomplish from that work. It should satisfy one’s personal need to be creative and productive and it should also produce some real help to society and/or
Many middle to lower class families cannot afford to send their kids to school and with Ivy League schools like Harvard and Princeton giving out generous financial packages to their student, who mostly come from wealthy background. The poorer students are on the losing end because they are not given the opportunity for aid. As Terry Hartle, the senior vice president of the American Council of Education, says, "Smart poor kids go to college at the same rate as stupid rich kids." What this is saying is that the wealthy families have vastly more opportunity to succeed in the college system even though they have equal or lesser smarts. Well respected schools such as NYU are now admitting students based on the financial fit not by merit.
Christopher Jencks, the author of Inequality, realized that men from high-status families have a higher income than men from low-status families even when they have the same occupation, same education. He also said that being financially success is all about being lucky. Bird also mentions that college attracts people have high IQs who are meant to be financially successful, who have a good family background. This brings to her point of colleges not bringing equality by putting them all in a four year degree. She says it’s a way to narrow the gap between high and low society and it is selective.
Brittany LamberthProfessor Wells English 102June 15, 2018Paul Krugman, agrees that the country is becoming economically diverse bit by bit. The middle ground amongthe richest and poorest is vanishing, and inequality is`widespread. His essay, “Confronting inequality” revealsonly how inequalityaffects us, but, as McClelland opposes, how recurringinequality can be. He references a study performed by the National Center for Education informationfrom the 1988 to 2003, in which eighth grade students were arrangedboth by academic skilland the socioeconomic rankof their parents, and the college graduation percentage. If our educational system truly gave all students equivalentopportunities, then we would expect the graduation rates to depend onlyon
Why is that? “When they ran the students' data, the dashboard indicates that 1,200 from the university of Texas … were failing … low income families(who gets to graduate 5).” This shows that low-income families were failing. Therefore, when you think of it, how many of those students were actually trying. Because if low-income students manage to pass college, then they would not be low-income . “As for the low-income, 40% of them need financial aid(who gets to graduate 5).” Furthermore, this means that those students came from low-income families.Therefore if it were not for financial aid those students wouldn’t be in college. But ,if those low-income students manage to get through college. This would mean that their futures would end up being brighter for them and their families. Let's look at reality, there is not a lot of people out there who are up for the challenge. They just go to college because everyone says they should go, but they do not know what to do when they get there. If you are one those people you should not go. But, if you are not and you are up for the challenge, then the sky is the limit. As you can see, go to college if you have a plan and if you are there to
Gary Becker’s and Kevin Murphy’s article, “The Upside of Income Inequality”, analyzes the positive effects of the income gap, and Paul Krugman’s New York Times column, “Confronting Inequality”, stresses the negative impact of the income gap; it is apparent by juxtaposing these two texts that income inequality can be effected by economic development, education, and social equality.
Work and its role in society has become the subject of considerable public commentary and debate in recent years. Work, for many Americans, has changed significantly over the past 25 years. Some people believe that the world of work is changing so thoroughly and quickly that we should consider ourselves pioneers of a new historical era. Some say that the idea of a job has become antiquated.
The first determinant of one’s fate is their family’s background. Almost none of the children from low-income families made it through college. With the expenses of college today, I’m actually not surprised by that statistic. Of the children from low-income families, only 4 percent had a college degree at age 28, compared to 45 percent of the children from higher-income backgrounds. "That 's a shocking tenfold
Recently there has been a lot of debate about the importance of college education. Students are asking if it’s worth the debt to attend a four year university or community college. Some are thinking what are the benefits of a degree is in the workforce. With college tuition increasing and state fundings lowering, low income students are struggling to attain a higher education. College institutions should have a role to provide students higher education and equal opportunity to students to increase social mobility yet intergenerational reproduction of privilege has produced inequality in education.
is through socioeconomic status. According to Sean Reardon, a main outcome of the widening income gap for families has been a widening gap in achievement among children, which he refers to as the income achievement gap (Reardon, 2011). Therefore, the children of the poor remain at an educational disadvantage when their parents’ income becomes as much of a predictor of their educational achievements, as their parents’ educational obtainment. To emphasize the results of the income achievement gap, Reardon states, “As the children of the rich do better in school, and those who do better in school are more likely to become rich, we risk producing an even more unequal and economically polarized society” (Reardon, 2011, p. 111). For example, as standardized testing shifted towards standardized achievement testing to determine a student’s academic achievement, parental investment in their children’s cognitive development began to increase. Educational disparities occur when affluent families can very easily afford tutoring outside of the classroom for their children to perform highly, while children being raised in impoverished homes are at a disadvantage, and at a lower chance of doing well on these exams. This becomes problematic when SAT reading, math, and writing scores increase with income as exemplified by the disproportionately small amount of minority students in higher education (Brand lecture,
Chapter thirteen of Fault lines, is called Government and the Economy: Is Income Inequality a Problem? In the chapter it talks about income inequality in America. The two authors of the opposing articles argue about how the income inequality is a good or bad thing. In America, income and wealth are distributed unequally because of location, experience in profession, and the education of the different careers.
Poverty leads to insufficient opportunities, especially in college education. For instance, according to U.S. Department of Education, students who do not enter college or drop out of their classes are “predominantly persons from low-income families.” In support of this argument, the article states that “only 21 percent of those with family income of less than $25,000 were highly qualified for admission at a four-year institution” compared to the 56 percent of students with family income above $75,000. Therefore, students with bad economic conditions struggle with attending university even after entering it. The problem is that the African Americans race gets the harshest disadvantage from their poor economic conditions. U.S. Department of Health & Human Services publishes that almost 40 percent of African Americans under 18 are below the national poverty line, which is three-times higher than their white counterparts. This explicitly proves that unequal economic conditions are the main reason for inequality in education; African Americans are the most disadvantaged. Furthermore, the correlation between poor economic conditions and a lack of education among African Americans creates a chain of inequality. The poor economic backgrounds of African Americans obstruct their children from attending colleges and subsequently, the lack of higher education makes
In the article “Who Gets to Graduate” by Paul Tough examines a problem about low income students are less likely to graduate from college than students from middle class or wealthier families. In the United States, school systems are not created equally. Middle and upper class students have access to safe and modern schools equipped with everything they possibly need to stay in that high rank because they came from a family who has the money to support their studies. Students from low-income families don’t have a lot of the support, stability, and money from home that higher-income students can take for granted.
Everything written in the article titled ‘The Upside of Income Inequality’ by Gary S. Becker and Kevin M. Murphy is not only a manipulation of the reader’s trust but it is also an insult of the reader’s intelligence. The fact that this article was first published in a magazine should speak volumes on the credibility of the statements made by these two authors. Becker and Murphy mention statistics comparing salaries and college educations but it is close to impossible to factor in the entire county to these statistics therefore, they are invalid. The article suggests that taxing the rich more than the lower class or ‘poor’ is similar to offering a subsidy to high school dropouts and taxing those going to college, but this is comparing apples to oranges and frankly it is a laughable comparison. Using appeals is an art form. Appeals help people articulate things that are important to them. Unfortunately, ethos, logos and pathos can be used to manipulate people as proven in this article.
In the article, “For the Poor, the Graduation Gap Is Even Wider Than the Enrollment Gap” by Susan Dynarski explains how the lower and upper class enroll in college at different rates, as well as graduate. A program was started known as the Educational Longitudinal Study. A study of dividing quartiles based on their parent’s educational background showed that parents with lower incomes were more likely to contain unskilled jobs compared to the higher income family containing manager positions. However, after 13 years, studies showed that only 14 percent of the less fortunate students and 60 percent of the fortunate students achieved their bachelors. By their late 20s tests also showed that 74 percent of wealthy students achieved their four-year
In the article “The Case Against College”, Linda Lee expresses her feelings about college. The article discusses why Linda feels that her son and most other people are better off not going to college. Not everyone is meant to go to college, but college is beneficial for some. For some it may be a waste of money, when they could simply go to a trade school or immediately start a good job right out of high school. There are so many people who have to go to college like nurses, teachers, doctors, lawyers, and professors.